Tales of the Roboutian Heresy: Silent Sanction
by Mojo1586
Summary: "Even whilst we fight, we watch. Even whilst we kill, we judge. Midst war's full fury, still we see. Midst all your guards, still we strike. We are the Death Lord's icy gaze. And we are his reaping blade." - Oath of the Deathshroud [Set within and inspired by Zahariel's 'Roboutian Heresy' Alternate History AU]


**_(Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Warhammer 40k, Space Marines, or any such thing. Those strictly fall under the purview of Games Workshop and all their affiliates. This is just a passion project and fanwork. 'The Roboutian Heresy' and that whole AU is the work of Zahariel)_**

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**\- Roboutian Heresy: Silent Sanction -**

* * *

**"_Even whilst we fight, we watch._**

**_Even whilst we kill, we judge._**

**_Midst war's full fury, still we see._**

**_Midst all your guards, still we strike._**

**_We are the Death Lord's icy gaze._**

**_And we are his reaping blade._"**

— _Oath of the Deathshroud_

* * *

**-I-**

I was of the Deathshroud, I was he who stands in silence before a galaxy aflame...

A thing done out of necessity, out of duty, for we of the Death Guard are the final sanction of the God Emperor of Mankind. His Agents of Mercy, forced to play witness to sights that would drive a sane man, or a weaker Astartes, to bitter madness.

More worlds than I care to remember burned amidst the conflagration of the chemical fire my brothers set into purpose. The cleansing flame that excises the rot that might seek to infect the body of the Imperium itself.

But recall most all of them I do, give or take the finest details, for the gifts of the Astartes offer no less despite the rigors of age...and I am old. One of those considered ancient among my brethren and bearing that title in silence. For more than a thousand standard years I have done as such, fighting and killing, bearing with them the blood of my Brothers and viewing the absolute worst of creation.

Dozens of worlds, perhaps more though the truest number escapes me now. Some wayward and treacherous, playing host to forces and powers that would see the vast realm our Spiritual Liege and Father both sacrificed all to safeguard laid low. Others lost to the ravages of old night, or perhaps newer threats that might one day fester in the shadows of humanity's preeminence to strike at the heart of the Imperium.

I have witnessed whole valleys carpeted in vile living circuitry of blood wrought iron, threaded veins, and distended byways granted monstrous sentience all its own. Left to simmer in tepid madness for untold millennia. All the while the debased descendants of those who had birthed it were harvested wholesale for screaming biological fuel.

I have seen titans of impossible size and unknowable cruelty birthed from the hollowed out crusts of besotted planets to ravage a system in turmoil, their destruction bought with the sacrifice of many thousands and the near total loss of a Great Company. A blow the XIVth still recovers from even today, though few outside the Legion know this.

I have strode at the side of Warrior Kings into the holdings of Xenos whose shape and biology defied explanation. Facing with them technology that rendered the laws of physics into something devised by the minds of the mad and insane.

And I have watched as we of the Death Guard destroyed them all in welters of purifying flame and chemical certainty, tools of final sanction brought to necessary purpose.

Whole civilizations trapped forever in a single moment of incomprehension by the detonation of ancient quantum warheads that were old in a time the Imperium itself was but a fledgling. Startling creations of artistry in the reverence of alien deities, abhorrent and incomprehensible to purer minds, all of it left to burn in atomic brilliance and beyond. Creatures from the depths of mania reduced to flesh matter and offal by the touch of viral intercession.

I have seen such things none would dare believe, lost things most would never understand nor wish to. Those secrets we've discovered in the outer dark in our long vigil.

Knowledge I have carried which must never be spoken to any outside the Legion...perhaps not even outside of the Third Great Company itself for the fear of what might spread.

Knowledge that would break whole sub-sectors at their very mention by the panicked knowledge of what lingered in the lost reaches, waiting for but a moment of opportunity my Legion had devoted all in body and soul to deny.

All this and more I have seen in my centuries of service, charged with the protection of heroes few would ever know and fewer would ever thank. I was to be the shield and the reaping scythe, and through my efforts and sacrifices might greater men be spared to carry us forward into the dark with burning brand and blade in hand.

I failed in my charge, and for that I know I will face judgment in the God Emperor's gaze and that of his most enduring Son, but not yet.

First, I must carry out this last solemn duty tasked to my station. A burden that has weight since first waking within the Apothecarion. Since I first laid eyes on Hamien Thrask, Commander of the Third Great Company of the Unbroken XIVth. A brother and a friend of several decades wounded and struggling only to rise once more from the jaws of death in a singular moment of glory.

A miracle some claimed, but they had not seen...

They could not discern the seeds of what he was becoming, of what he would surely do if left to his own devices...but I did, for I was he who stands in silence, ever watchful.

* * *

**-II-**

_I was of the Deathshroud, beholden to Title and Duty under the ancient posting and the sacrifices thereof..._

_All that I had once been cast aside willingly decades earlier to take up of the helm and the scythe in accordance to...well, what some might consider a vision of divinity, others mere hubris of the deluded. My rank, glories earned across a hundred worlds in service to the Golden Throne of Terra I had never seen. My name, the only scant trace of a life lived before the Legions had seen fit to grant me ascension to their pale ranks. My voice, of confidences shared with those I called Brother never to be spoken of again._

_He who I had become charged to act as the silent eyes of the Primarch and symbol of his favor in this time of greatest uncertainty. Cast in the Death Lord's grim stolid aspect, it was my solemn duty to stand vigil with the Leaders of his Legion, to stand in their defense as Mortarion did the Tribes of Barbarus before the coming of the Emperor._

_Such was my duty to stand, to guard my ward from harm and steal the blow meant for him. To stand resolute where no others might...and to my everlasting shame I failed in this blessed charge._

_"Today you die by my hand, Gorgon-son! Your curs fall in droves even as we speak! This world cleansed of your bile!"_

_I was present when Hamian Thrask, Commander of the Death Guard's Third Great Company and storied Hero of the blessed Emperor's Imperium, stood defiant. Unyielding as faith and duty demanded in the face of decay portrayed and did not falter as lesser souls might and had for millennia uncounting since Chaos first reared its ugly visage upon humanity._

_A man who wielded his presence as a torch to light the darkness, an inspiration to others. The seventh such great soul I had served under, the others faces and deeds lingering in a wizened mind...but at the price of mine own opinion, perhaps the brightest. Ever confident in defiance of the solemn countenance of our shared gene-line, a somber rarity in a thousand years._

_Upon the now barren fields of the besieged agriworld Aestimatio, once a jewel of the Atalantan Expanse now rendered down to a cesspit of disease and rotting iron, I watched where I should have stood at his side._

_Here was Mortarion's son millennia distant, bearing defiance with the blessed relic blade Veridicus in the face of this Plague Champion of the thrice damned Iron Hands. For that was our duty, this world corrupt as a bared wound open to infection, the charge of the XIVth Legion to act as cleansing flame to sear away the taint lest it spread further across the primary continent and beyond to sicken the stars themselves. _

_"Your debased revels, your pathetic mewling idolatry, they end here and now!"_

_-"Aaaaaaall will rot, rust, wither, and bend! Even I...none may be spared the passage of entropy! The music of ending! None may stand against it! Not me...Not yooooooou!"-_

_A chortle of what might once have been laughter, now resembling more wet wracking coughs or gargling effluence, spilled forth as so much rusting pestilence from a desiccated vox-grille scarcely recognizable as belonging a ruined Mark III Pattern helm. Such was the utter violation the wargear had suffered, this barest reminder of the proud warrior of the Imperium that this creature might once have been._

_What little of the traitor's face visible beneath the damage, what little there was left beneath a sprawling patchwork of weeping sores, pus stained buboes, and septic age-old augmetics, bunching in abhorrent glee. Staring down at this latest victim as it had his honour guard, slain along the lengths of writhing mechadendrites that now resembled more flesh-riddled tendrils hooked with quivering barbs that oozing lethal acids and other diseased cultures of aetheric provenance. Their corpses cast about asunder, the heroes of a hundred brutal campaigns reduced to blood-thick organic slurry that drooled from the cracked breaches in their armour seals._

_And yet I did not stand with him in the face of such horror..._

_His terminator-clad protector, he who had stood with his Predecessor and his and theirs before, had been reduced and cast aside by a curse that had sickened and laid low the machine-spirit residing within its carapace. The chestpiece of ancient warplate crumpled inwards by a back swipe of the Champion's iron wrought power maul and left to idle upon sodden loamy earth. Lifeless as a coffin within which I'd railed silently in shame and pain. The fused slab of bone comprising my rib cage shattered to knifing shards, a lung perforated wholesale, several ligaments and earned augmetic replacements torn and damaged._

_Worst of all the feeling of virulent poison seeping up from beneath to fester in open wounds, allowed to take hold in a moment of spiritual weakness. Unable to move let alone reach for the man-reaper lying discarded several meters distant across the pestilence choked staging grounds my brothers had fought and died to reach._

_The sacred oath of service and duty for which I had died and been reborn threatened as I could do nothing. Nothing but watch, that meanest of my roles...and so the music began, writ in the laughter of plague and daemonic infection. A song denied, but a song that played nonetheless._

-"Suuuuuuch is a weakness of the flesh! Such is the weakness in all things of this caustic reality!"-

_The once Astartes, now something far more and yet far less than it had once been, plodded forward with the heavy uneven gait of the corrupt. Its armoured figure swollen beyond former dimensions by the mutations of plague and the caustic augmentation of millennia. Rusted power maul digging a trench of the loamy earth, pale maggots of fell mechanical provenance seeded in his wake to wriggle and scream into the muck. _

_Yet another violation heaped upon a world bereft, the seeds of chaos sown and left to fester._

-"Yooooooou will fall, Guardian of Death! Princeling to a corpse-Father and beholden to a corpse-god. They cannot protect you here!"-

_He wheezed and coughed with a lurch of mechanical clicks and clatters, tone making mockery of title and spiritual liege in a wash of crude vitriol. His maul falling in a downward arc that Thrask scarcely managed to sidestep, a still twitching Legionary in pus riddled black armour felled earlier by my hand reduced to mulch beneath the crushing weight in his stead. Veridicus arcing in a brilliant backhanded sweep of gold, its edge scoring across the fell Champion's side to sear away bloated flesh and decaying armour. Dragging a roaring bellow of outrage from a rusting grille._

-"Your Emperor cannot comfort you as the Plague Lord would, your pains and worries smothered to nothing in the womb of the graaaaaaave!"-

_Mechadendrites raced to spear the Death Guard, still dripping with his Brothers' vitae, their deaths avenged with in a handful of deft cuts severing the augments like pale wriggling serpents crushed swiftly underfoot..._

_"I need not His shield, Traitor! For I am His aegis, His cleansing flame, the sweep of His blade!"_

_My charge stood proud, his unpainted armor stained thick with the clotting evidence of a dozen wounds taken on our approach, for despite my best efforts the Commander of the Third had never been one to stand idle and allow others to face danger in his stead. Leading his fellows against the hordes of capering horrors born to the Plague god's festering assembly. _

_Shrieking half dead cadavers drawn from the ranks of the planet's unfortunates seeking to bury our brothers under their weight, suffocating them within heaving cairns of abused flesh. S__hambling mechanized behemoths all bloated pustules and corroded pneumatics poorly combined by cruel artifice hooting and cawing in vomit choked ecstasy as bolt and heavy armament brought them low. Giggling__ daemon-spawned wretches tearing at our brother's armour, ripping at seals and joints with jaundiced nails and stinging venom-tipped barbs seeking to aid their cyborg masters. _

_Thrask faced these blights unflinchingly, and granted death to all that stood before him. Asking of no man what he wouldn't do himself, his armour painted in the dirtied remnants of those same trenches and redoubts they had won, his blood mingled with theirs and vice-versa. _

_It was why we followed him, why we loved him._

_And yet those wounds had proven dire in the mounting, even so. His face -already pallid and shaped gaunt by the blessings of the Death Lord's genetic legacy- corpse white and marred by mottled weeping sores as his transhuman resilience struggled valiantly against the fell touch of disease threatening to lay him low._

_The worst degradation by far a jagged spar of corroded metal piercing chest piece and fused rib cage both to perforate the secondary heart within. A blow thrust forth by this one's foulest retainer, a fell sorcerer of rusting malignancy caught in the midst of ritual waylaid at the last by the inexorability of our assault. His last spiteful act to wound this warrior of the Throne with the rusting tip of his staff._

_The glee painting his pox-ridden countenance dispelled to absent surprise by the swing of a reaper's scythe as I acted in support of my charge, inwardly cursing such a momentary lapse. A misshapen head landing several meters distant still mouthing the foul Medusan curses of his dead homeworld on wriggling lips._

_Yet despite such terrible injury Thrask had still stood where I could not. Bearing such wounds that would've felled less hardy gene-stock. A warrior proudly facing this enemy of the Emperor without hesitation or reluctance._

_This being how I choose to remember him now..._

_"For His gaze to bear witness your death, to see the crimes of millennia finally answered...such is all the 'comfort' I require! Ave Imperator!"_

_And so the Emperor's Agent of Mercy and the Champion of the Rusting Horde came together in the fight. Golden faith versus crushing plague in a struggle that brought tears of pride to eyes bleary with pain. At some moments it was naught but step and counter-step in a dance only those two could truly follow, deft thrust and parry to shatter bone and open flesh. At others only mindless battering of armour plates with gauntlet and winged quillon, artless abandon throwing caution to the winds to wound the foe._

_It was a battle of Demigods, drawn from bloodlines that knew nothing of subtlety or submission in war._

_Never have I seen the like, even across so many battlefields as I have marched in this misbegotten age, and never would I again..._

* * *

**-III-**

I was of the Deathshroud, and with corrupt laughter and fecund music still echoing pain inside my skull and blighted rot biting deep into transhuman flesh I pushed myself forward. Marching with stuttering stride through the echoing halls of the Legion Battle Barge _Dauntless_...

A sapping of my strength with every wheezing breath and juddering step, the advance of Terminator plate already slow and ponderous. A trial burdened further by this corrupting weakness, a cancer lingering across the barest edges of my soul, a festering kept at bay by purpose...my last purpose. Whispers unbidden in my thoughts crooning the pleasures of submission to the inevitable.

A moment's laxity after centuries of pain and duty. To have fought for so very long, the chance to find peace if only I would relent...

I shut the voices out, knowing true rest was not long in coming...just a bit longer, one last effort required...

Two sons of proud Barbarus stood sentinel in dim illumination before my wayward tread. Both poised before the broad set of double doors leading further into the Commander's personal sanctum with bolter in hand, vigilant in their own assignment and responsibility.

Two warriors of the Death Guard, lone survivors of Tactical squads fallen upon Aestimatio and granted the honour of standing in my place as I lay recovering within hidden vaults of the Apothecarion. Acting as if they understand the need for my presence as so few alive do, the learning often coming with cost few can bear.

Still, there are few signs of their mourning, as is the way of the Death Guard. Votive parchments hung by wax seals across shoulder pauldrons bearing the names and deeds of the slain, left untouched for forty-two day cycles as deemed appropriate in the Chaplaincies stern gaze before promptly discarded.

War rages on, and the XIVth must march to meet it unburdened and unbroken.

And so they stood, resplendent in unpainted ceramite growling with humming potency as each subtly shifted to readiness upon noting my lumbering approach. Both broad and mighty in their own right, stolid examples of the Legion's enduring lineage that would stand as demigods above the mortal crew and appointed housecarls responsible for manning the Legion's vessels and seeing to the needs of their transhuman masters with humility and sacred cause.

Even armed and armoured however, each was still but a boy-child before the sheer force of presence exuded by Tartaros Pattern Tactical Dreadnought plate, A thing modified and remade far beyond its original scope over the millennia since its first forging. The stark damage inflicted by the fell son of Ferrus Manus repaired if not wholly absent, left forever as shameful reminder in the subtle dents worked across plackart and breastplate.

Warnings to the next successor to bear the relic into battle upon his shoulders, and a show to all others that the might of the XIVth Legion endures even if I shall not.

For the briefest doubled beat of our heartbeats I wondered if they might, in error, attempt to waylay my path. Loyal to Legion and Lord they might be, but even to the blind and deaf my intentions would doubtless be obvious. Even so it took them several long moments to notice my war-footing, several seconds more to realize I had no intention of merely standing sentinel in their place.

They could suspect, perhaps disagree. It mattered little, I knew of my duty, and the lengths I would go to see it fulfilled.

"The Commander dwells within, Brother." One of them broke the sacred silence, one I found I recognized. Nicat Vorn, a stolid Second to his late Sergeant and one Thrask himself had marked out for his potential displayed in better days. "He requested not to be disturbed."

He says this to me, as if they should possess bearing over what must happen. As though he vainly hopes I can be dissuaded.

I understand this want, for it beats within my own straining hearts even now.

Vorn stands bereft, the loss of his closest brothers gnawing at his footing, and now my appearance and what it might foretell. His desires cling for purchase over what remains to keep him grounded. And if he tries to stop me, I know I will slay him for it.

The folly of my kindred laid bare plain for me to see, an admission perishing upon the youthful Legionary's tongue and twisting his visage into a pained grimace of shame beneath his helm. Felt all the more keenly under my silent scrutiny. Such is my burden, to inspire and act as a vision to those who bore the Death's head sigil upon their pauldrons, yet also my curse.

It is said that a Space Marine knows no concept of fear, which might well be truth. I have seen evidence in proof and denial of this. But we can know hesitation, pause, loss.

These things I see broiling within Vorn now, as is my duty. Audible in his bearing betrayed by armour, visible even through the blank face of a helm in the way he clutches for his bolter. Hesitation, pause, and loss can prove assets in correct circumstance, but a hindrance in the here and now. Things I would not have tolerated in days before, my withering scorn penance enough.

But today of all days I keep my silence, my presence speaks louder than ever I could in my first life so long before.

I am symbol and example both in the Death Lord's name, and these men had already failed me in their minds with their refusal to do what must be done. Their weakness in leaving such a duty to another. Such would linger for the rest of their lives, as in the hearts of every Astartes of the Company that had noticed something amiss and yet done nothing.

I could judge them for this lapse. In earlier days I might have without question, but in this hour I did not. Had I not witnessed what had occurred I might yet be among them in ignorance, or perhaps not. I cannot know, and so I stomp forward almost expecting them to stop me.

They do not, and so I spare them.

Such a day day of tragedy would bear bitter fruit enough for all the Third to partake without my addition...

* * *

**-IV-**

_I was of the Deathshroud, and yet I lay helpless amidst the dirt and muck of a diseased world..._

_Watching as my Lord did make battle with this bloated Artisan of Rust and Decay._

_Witnessing, silent and broken audience, as a brave man fought amidst and in some somber cases against the corpses of his fellows in much the same manner as the Death Lord himself upon the blighted heights of Pythos against the Black Dragon, accursed Vulkan, thrice-damned. May his degenerate soul see fit to rot in the hellpyres of Old Earth for his fell transgressions._

_Following the bar of brilliant light that was Veridicus in its clash with a nameless maul steeped in unholy disease. Sparks cast by their briefest touches scattering about to ignite the bloated daemon-flies churning about the field in pyres of foul smelling gaseous discharge. Aetheric flickers attempting in vain to bring the Crusader of the XIVth low, mistakenly believing that a pale son of Barbarus would succumb to a meager thing like poison before he saw his duty done._

_And it was...their struggle ending with the Lord Commander of the Third Great Company of Mortarion's Death Guard poised in pyrrhic victory._

_A Prince of Death, His full weight knelt and resting upon his sword, its length driven clean through the twitching body of a plagueborn ogre. The Traitor finally shown a true death kept at bay long enough, finally granted, his killer bloodied and broken upon the mound._

_Through the pall of my own fading consciousness I watched my brother draw in his final breath, a silent prayer to the emperor on pale lips._

_I watched him die, slumping across the blade as all strength fled from his armoured body. Transhuman hearts beating their last thunderous tattoo._

_And in horror I watched as something foreign and wicked pulsed to fell life within Thrask's chest and forced a rattling breath. A bilious stream of buzzing foulness drawn to the spar driven within a freshly vacated shell of ceramite and meat, forcing blood to flow afresh through ruined organs before his body had even gone cold. Bastardized life taking the place of valiant rest._

_Wounds that had slain a hero pulsated and twitched with sickening sighs across a puppet. Muscle and tissue suturing itself together beneath jagged rents in ceramite...the witch-kin's spearhead tumbling away to rust scattered on ash born winds born of the Legion's great pyres. This world was tainted, it must be harrowed by the flame so as to burn out the rot._

_But the rot was already inside..._

_Before the blackness of a regenerative sus-an coma took hold, I beheld that creature who wore my brother's skin and thought itself the deceiver drew lips back with a glimmer of something I almost recognized as familiar. A snarling smile of wicked intent and immortal confidence, absent the faith and driving purpose of my friend._

_And then it started to laugh, the rumble of approaching thunderhawk gunships heralding my fall into the darkness of the grave, lulled by a tune played at the furthest edge of hearing..._

* * *

**-V-**

I was of the Deathshroud, and proof of the depths of my failure stood now before my eyes. Worse still, it wore the guise of a friend.

"Brother." Its voice was the same bold timbre that Hamien Thrask had born in life, seemingly unburdened by the necessary duty our forebears had charged us with. A presence and tone that could have fooled another, and given its continued existence it had done just that. "Such relief to see you still yet walk among us. When the Apothecaries bore you away from Aestimatio, I'll admit I had my doubts. You seemed all but lost."

I was not so easily swayed, I who had watched and judged the Commander of the Third as only a shadow can.

His greatest heights in the raging tumult of near two centuries of warfare and strife. An unbroken blade of Mortarion's own, reaping with him a bountiful harvest in the blood of the Imperium's foes.

His greatest failings hidden behind closed doors in the depths of sanctum, hours spent steeped in self-flagellating doubts and such personal crisis of faith the shame of which could only be shared with his silent confidant sworn to his side lest they shatter the morale of a Legion force that must hold fast.

Such was my role, and such doubts I did not see etched in the bearing of this creature. A thing untroubled by a life spent in service to the Emperor's Agents of Mercy...

The agony in my chest redoubled, something within clutching tendrils about my hearts and squeezing tight in constricting grasp. Be it the infection or my own sorrow I could not say, merely tightening the grip I held on my manreaper and forcing another step into the shadowed cell.

"Aye. Come, come closer." The thing that wore Thrask's face smiled his smile and beckoned me closer with gauntleted hand outstretched. It still wore his armour, repaired at some point in the time I lay in convalescence and restored to working order, better even. The man I knew having preferred the scars upon his armor, a show of martial pride. This I noted.

Bare of the pomp and grandeur that might adorn the quarters of other Legion's officers, the chamber was much the same as last I had stood within its for the Death Guard the marble statuary and portraiture of the Emperor's Children Prefector or the tome laden shelves a Magi of the Thousand Sons might espouse.

Nothing adorned the walls cold iron and adamantium but a gently swaying banner of the XIVth Legion's Third Company, the space it enclosed bearing little more than a personal arming rack currently bare and weapon's mount, a pallet of utilitarian design untroubled these last weeks, and a plasteel desk upon which lay scattered an array of charts and data-slates.

Everything devoted to practicality but for a recessed small shrine tucked into the far corner as if set there as if in afterthought, meant not as a focus of the chamber. Constantly present nonetheless, the God Emperor of Mankind might watch over them still, but in it was the Astartes who did his work by their own hand.

Something Thrask believed in, though never did he neglect to leave a candle lit before a statuette depicting the Imperium's spiritual liege. Yet no fire burned now, no faith to spur such a thing remaining. This I saw as well, and it noticed.

"I was reviewing the Company's losses incurred during our last engagement." His expression sours, the same muscle ticks of anger and sorrow played across the same canvas at the hands of a differing artist. "A victory, yes, but the Xth Legion bled us deeply for that worthless speck of grime and rust, that much is sure. Not one squad left fully intact, not one. Were you even aware?"

I force another ponderous step, its echo ringing through the halls forced along on protesting servo-motors and hydraulic supports.

Rheumy eyes searching behind crimson lenses for scant signs of corruption even as I ready the killing blow, looking for proof.

Such was my weakness, weathered by the maddening song of decay and raucous laughter tolling entropy. I searched for something to make this easier, and yet found nothing.

_'...God Emperor of Humanity, forgive me my weakness...gird my soul in this dark moment...lend me strength to do what must be done...'_

"...And our Techmarine covenant's last missive spells a dire shortage in heavy support assets and armour, our very forges running dry...as if even they know." It continued on, gesturing to the reports as if it could not see my fingers trembling in their ceramite sheathes, clinging to the manreaper as my shoulders stirred under leaden weight. "Why, even the _Dauntless _itself sustained great damage in the fleet skirmishes as their ships retreated, with the escorts _Pathos _and _Toleration _lost with all hands during the initial drop assault. So many lost, so little gained."

"..."

I would not answer him, could not. Hamien Thrask's patrician face broke into a sneer I'd not seen directed at any but the foulest of xenos or the most debased of traitors.

"Can you not hear it, brother? Can you not see between the lines of what such omens foretell?"

And there the first blow was struck, like a cool blade piercing rib to caress the quivering meat within. Doubt in its poisonous guise, stirred by the sludge oozing within my veins. My resolve tested, my will faltering...such was the threat of giving in, of agreement.

"This Song of Ending, it pulses across the galaxy like the beat of a fading heart, as stuttering exultation in the drums of constant war. The laughter yet of the things lurking beyond, cackling at the footnote of reality under duress."

Its venomous features became a smile, twisted beyond Thrask to reveal the subtle dangers of what lay within. Contentment...Inevitability...its grip was on me now, armour squealing as I stagger, runic warnings blinking across my sensorium's view. Fading vitals flashing on all fronts, the creature's influence exerted now in truth...or perhaps something more, breathing within me...

"You feel it, don't you? The Imperium itself is burning. The lines of engagement bend and break, allowing horrors fresh and old to sleep through the cracks."

My brother's body...the thing that wore his body...shifted, a hand falling towards the hilt of blessed _Veridicus _hanging at his waist, the grip's golden winged guard tarnished. That I hadn't noticed, too intent on my task to focus properly. Darkness tinging the corners of my vision as though in muddied pond scum. In their depths I imagined steam drifting from the contact of sanctified steel and ceramite, the weapon rebelling as well, suffering.

I would grant the mercy it sought...

"Our sacrifice here in the dark means nothing, I see that now. Can't you? Millennia come and gone, and what has changed for what has been lost? Nothing, always _nothing!_"

Here they were, the doubts of so many of the XIVth across the ages laid bare by the lips of he who was once one of its greatest Champions. The cruel irony of such a thing would have been enough to bring acid to my tongue, had their been any room to spare. I tasted blood, ashes, overlaid across the sour bile of Mortarion's gift.

The dry taste of worlds burned, their populations cast to the winds of our mercy...

Were these the tricks of the daemonic, or the true voice of my friend finally realized? That pain of indecision cost me dearly...

It brought me to my knees, metal deck plating warping underneath the weight of armour and fatigue. The weight of hundreds of men, their faces watching as I survived and marched on to leave them behind in the dust and ashes of a hundred and more worlds. Names even I struggled to recall, the Emperor's gift of eidetic memory having long since lost its edge...but the losses, the chains bearing me down...

Ancient, a thousand years of age, every day of it felt now...I was...Ancient...Ancient and tired...so very tired...Not in centuries had I felt so drained of my Lord's vitality...not since those earliest days upon the surface of blessed Barbarus...the thorns tearing at pale scarred flesh, gases that seared the lungs...trials that would see me ascend to something more yet less than human...

"Speak, Brother. Let me hear of your thoughts." Fingers caressed the faceplate of my helm, tinglings of sensation I could feel prickling through layers of ceramite at the contact stealing what little breath remained to me. "The Emperor does nothing to bind your oath, for He _is _nothing! Speak to me, speak _with _me. I will need your voice to bring clarity to our kin. To enlighten the whole of the Death Guard in this, this final age to the truths we deny with every breath."

The temptation to break with my oath, to let free the vitriol of a thousand years overwhelming. If I did the pain would end, this I know instinctively. My agony forgotten in submission...but I was my Father's son still...

-"_SPEAK_!"-

And so I did, not with a mouth of cracked lips and missing teeth but with the voice I had used across the centuries. In the whistling sweep of the blade. Hesitation fading into cold certainty in that instant, that of rest that _would _come...but only in death does duty end in truth.

I had failed this lost soul once already. I would not fail again.

_Veridicus _was free and brought to bear in the span of less than a heart's pulse, deflecting the hammering artless swing of the manreaper with apparent ease. This was expected as a warrior with half of the Commander's skill at arms could have seen me slain in such a state as I found myself. I could have swung again a handful, a hundred, a thousand times more and the result would be as the same.

Thrask granted me no such chance for another. Already the powered blade having struck again, battering the scythe from my grasp with preternatural strength and speed taking several fingers with it.

I don't feel this, my nerves deadened to a tingling ache across my extremities.

What strength I had remaining reserved, devoted to the sole task of raising my off hand high. A nerve pulse igniting the pilot light of the flamer mounted across vambrace. A further twitch in my wrist loosing a torrent of sickly green flame into the chamber to spill across my enemy's chest at extreme close range. An unholy mixture of highly corrosive chemical sorcery and virulent incendiary compounds utterly inimical to organic matter.

A thing bestowed only to a trusted few, used only in dire desperation. A weapon of sanction and control...the latter of which there was none to be found here.

Thrask...the thing wearing Thrask or so I prayed, staggered backwards. Knocking table and charts aside and adding more fuel to the infernal heat, screaming like a thing possessed as the gelid flames licked upon its exposed flesh and cooked the blood in his veins. The blaze feeding off the oxygen within the room, expanding exponentially in thermic heat and volume in mere moments to turn the Traitor's upper body into a flailing torch. Ceramite blackened and cracked, hissing internal gases into the air to fan the fires further, flesh sloughing like wax between gauntlets that vainly attempted to beat out the inferno consuming him whole and succeeding only in shattering his face and skull to ashen shards beneath steaming ceramite.

The corruption hidden from bare sight beneath burned beyond the point where most things should have rightly died. A hissing writhing nothingness all dark trembling coral stalks, blooming pistils, and raw pulsing indolence bursting through bloated crackling mass only to be consumed as fat broiled and meat sizzled, and still it lived for several moments more to its clear cost before falling limp and mewling its agonies to the deck.

The aetheric might sustaining its existence waging battle against alchemically imposed reality...and reality was swiftly holding sway.

When it finally expired, I heard rather than imagined the laughter once more...its crooning attempts to match the carrion tune beating time within my skull. Its taint not yet absent...or perhaps it had never touched me at all, this presence within me the makings of another force, another power. Perhaps, given time I would become as Thrask had been, a shell of doubt and acquiescence rotted hollow from within.

Thankfully, I did not have time. The reckless use of such a weapon as sure a death sentence truer than the rot growing within my chest cavity as was always the intention.

Already the fires that had buffeted him back had splashed back to feed upon my right arm, even the aegis of Tactical Dreadnought Armour insufficient proof.

Still it spread, devouring, consuming...the flesh within my arm sizzling at a heat beyond anything I could ever have expected, feeding voraciously using the air and my body as its sustenance.

The pain of it, as though the nerves themselves were being pulled raw, flensed by serrated fangs of savage conflagration and exposed to the gaze of a sun...but still I held my sacred silence if only by a thread.

I could do that much. But not for long, and the fire would consume me long before. Another oath broken cruelly.

It was then I heard the sound of muffled alarms grow shriller, the cries of a ship springing to react to the danger literally searing through its bowels. Dimly I registered another presence, another Legionary having clambered into the space and stood transfixed by what he beheld.

A sanctum aflame, the body of a commander rent asunder to reveal the still wriggling disgrace of what lay within. A shrine of the God Emperor, a hand carved statue of rare plant matter plucked from the toxin enriched soil of Barbarus alone standing where all else had melted to slag. A crude face with stern eyes staring lifelessly at the slumped figure of the Deathshroud Terminator, kneeling as though in prayer and trembling with the agony of the purifying flame.

A heat blackened helm looking up through cracked lenses to see the face of another of the Death Guard staring back. Familiar, but amidst his pain and effort to remain silent he could not remember his name, but that was as nothing.

All that mattered was that this man knew what he had done, what it had cost. More importantly, he understood his role in this tragedy given that the Ancient could not do the deed himself in this circumstance.

Wordless, for what words could be said, the Legionary raised his bolter and took careful aim. He would need such preparation to ensure a swift conclusion, an Agent of Mercy in truth.

The Ancient allowing himself a smile of deepest gratitude to pierce through the agony as he stared down the barrel, knowing this nameless Brother would never see it, nor perhaps ever understand the mercy he was offering.

And with a final thunderous discharge, the Ancient finally allowed himself submission...his final oath satisfied...his silence unbroken...

* * *

**-VI-**

I was Nicat Vorn, formerly of the lost IVth Tactical Squad of the Death Guard's Third Great Company, Son of the Death Lord Mortarion and Astartes of His stoic legion...and yet I felt a note of pause at the hour of my death.

Knelt as I was in the echoing confines of the armourium decks, prostrate before the towering adamantium shell of armour reforged if still bearing scars.

Thin lines of indents across the chest piece where spiked maul had driven into the plate, the impressions of hundreds of hard rounds and the warped whorls of plasma fire earned across the ages to name only a few. Latest still the remnants of heat scarring and blackened plasteel rivets stretching across the older segments that had by fate or fortune avoided total immolation.

Much of the left arm, gorget, and greaves forcibly drawn from fresher marks, replacing sections consumed by an chemic-blaze that had required venting whole sections of the Command deck to the open void to extinguish. The remains of...of the creature ejected from the airlock after stringent ablations cast in holy oils upon its inert remains, or so whe'd hoped they were.

Our path from there uncertain, the whole of the Third cast adrift in the wake of such disaster.

This armour...this last piece had been the Company's best attempt at recouping what had been lost. Even so the changes and additions could do little to hide the scratches of bolt detonation within the collar, my rounds. Armour I had sundered by mine own hand in an act of mercy, its last bearer slain at my hand with duty done.

A duty ready to be passed onto the next soul to bear it thus.

A soul summoned from his cell in the dead of night by visions seen in dream. A glimpse captured of a man with face shrouded in silence, the blood of a brother bereft upon his hands. Another figure larger still, standing at his side. A body fit to bear the weight of mercy garbed in a cloak of his own, spun in the poisonous skies of Barbarus with deep set eyes that pierced to the heart of who I was.

Staring with the icy gaze of a Father, my Father...eyes I had only ever seen in depiction upon stained glass or mural. Eyes no artist, mortal or Astartes, could ever hope to capture. And yet I recognized them at once, and I knew what it was they asked of me as I awoke in a sweat with the bitter taste of the Legion's bile upon my tongue and a prayer to move my lips.

At the first breath I wondered at the authenticity of such an experience. I doubted in guilt and shame, thinking upon the hubris of so daring a notion as to believe. But still I found myself here, nevertheless. Called by the armour, called by the purpose and life that it promised.

All it asked for was my death. A pittance, truly...

The Master of the Third's ship-born forges noting my coming and guessing at my purpose in silent understanding. One nod and a chamber of dozens, serfs, tech adepts, all had filed away into the shadows.

Each mouth sworn to solemn secrecy of who and what they had seen, their lord putting his tools to rest as he himself ventured to the halls housing the Company's vast history in written record. Meticulously kept by the Legion's tallymen, serfs and legionaries wounded beyond the point of service sworn to carry our deeds, both the light and the dark, forward into the future so that none might forget the costs of what we do for Imperium and Emperor.

This so, the Master of the Forge moved only to scribe a name. One more to be added to the lists of the honoured dead, Nicat Vorn. My name, one more lost among thousands...as His was. As they all were.

And so I stood upon the oil slicked arming rack, alone but for a pair of lobotomized arming servitors set to aid in the task before me.

"_Even whilst we fight, we watch." _I breathed the words, a whisper sub-audible beyond the realms of all but the ears of a demigod, or perhaps those that listened in realms beyond.

I breathed a pledge, heard at the edge of consciousness as if in dream. Their meaning seared forever more into my mind.

Armoured sheets of ceramite, plasteel, and adamantium composite pulled with machined reverence by the locomotion of spindly piston driven limbs.

Drills and pneumatic devices assembling the protective frame of armour piece by piece in ordained ritual, each turn of bolt and pressure seal the stuff of myth and sacred verse. Pre-recorded binaric hymnals pulsing from vox-emitters sutured into hollowed out throats echoing throughout the chamber, blatant expressions to the glories of artifice. Sacred wargear exalted in the name and service of the Emperor under his guise as the Machine God of Mars given new life.

_"Even whilst we kill, we judge."_

Thousands of pseudo-reactive nerves pulsed to violent life across a frame of ceramite and adamantium draped across pallid musculature, driven by the shunted induct connections that bonded the armour with the black carapace.

It was fire afresh, and it set my teeth together in wordless snarl.

A multitude of sensations colored by history and memories of another who had worn it previously, one of my blood...yet not me, and the spirit within rebelled in protest at the change. The excoriation of it a shriving, a becoming all my own. Long minutes passing in silence as the oils and whispered ministrations of my mindless aides quelled its rage, cooling the white hot morass into something approaching that somber reluctance of a loyal hound abandoned.

A pain that would linger long, beating in concert with my own. It believed me unworthy, and perhaps I was.

Yet I was here, and no true Death Guard would not be daunted by such a thing as mere pain.

_"Midst war's full fury, still we see. Midst all your guards, still we strike..."_

Still, I hesitated at the last with helmet in hand, the final piece of my newest office. Feeling the cold weight of history in this simple flame scored relic. Red eye lenses leering sightless in the dark, penetrating yet empty all at once. My soul exposed beneath such a gaze, as had so many others before. The same gaze that had driven me here, _His _gaze.

Before it, I was a child...a whelp clutching at history. Basking in the the cold shadow of so many others who had come before. Armoured in faith and bound in duty to Throne and Legion.

The latest of their number a nameless Brother who had served the Golden Throne, the Legion, all of Mankind's dominion for millennia and more. His final act some might have seen as shame ended by mine own hand and juddering bolter. A bitterest failure and an ignoble end to one so grand, but such was not the purpose of this role. Glory not the providence of one who must stand at the side of greater men, a sacrifice of pride as painful to some Astartes as tearing free their hearts from chest, more so.

Never would I know greater cause than this, never would I bear other responsibility or share in the camaraderie of like souls again. Doomed to stand alone at the sides of giants, their shadow, their shield, their blade.

Such was this sacrifice, one I made willingly in the sight of those cold lenses clasped in ceramite fingers...my fingers now.

Drawing in a breath as the thunder of my hearts calmed and made utterance, certitude ringing strong in the last words Nicat Vorn would ever speak aloud as helmet seals locked and senor feeds sprang to brilliant life. My voice the snarl of history, echoing in the confines of a helm that was to be watchmen, judge, and if needed...executioner.

_"...We are the Death Lord's icy gaze. And we are his reaping blade._"

I was of the Deathshroud, and in silence now my watch is begun..._Ave Imperator._

* * *

**_\- Log Terminated -_**

* * *

**_A/N: Wrote this to honor an inspiring AU, and for hours spent enjoying the ideas of what could have been being explored in such detail. - Mojo_**


End file.
